Part 20 (1/2)

”This might take some time,” Jack said to Pete as they walked along the narrow high street outside Jack's flat. ”We're going to have to go into the Black.” He looked down at her. ”Not that you seem to have a problem with that any longer.”

”I do what I have to,” said Pete shortly. ”You wouldn't tell me the truth.”

Jack laughed once. ”I have to remember you're not sixteen any longer.”

”Not for some time,” Pete said. She felt a breath of wind and then suddenly it was full night and they were walking past grated and boarded-up storefronts, hunched shapes sleeping on the grates that vented the underground. A prehensile tail twitched out from under a ratty red blanket.

”It's just up here,” Hattie called from ahead of them.

”That was easy,” Pete remarked.

”In-between places,” said Jack. ”Those alleys that no one ever looks down. All of Whitechapel is thin, makes it easy to pa.s.s back and forth.”

”I'm just telling you now, we don't have much time,” said Pete. ”Less than twelve hours if it's keeping to the same line as with the other three children.”

”Time goes differently in the Black,” Jack said. ”Slows down, goes backward or forward.”

”Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Pete asked.

Jack reached the metal security door that Hattie was standing in front of, her hands and shoulders twitching.

”No,” Jack said. ”Once I came in for a pint and walked out at breakfast time three days hence.” He slid the door back on its rollers and gestured Pete inside. ”After you, luv.”

They walked down, on a set of slippery metal stairs through air that smelled like p.i.s.s and sweat, droplets of moisture shaken from pipes overhead by throbbing ba.s.s.

”What exactly are we hoping to accomplish by coming here?” Pete asked Jack, raising her voice to be heard over the m.u.f.fled music.

Hattie threw open the door and a profundo remix of ”Don't Like the Drugs” smacked into Pete like a brick.

”An impression!” Jack shouted, and then they were inside.

The bas.e.m.e.nt room could have been Fiver's, with the walls painted black and the tiny raised stage s.p.a.ce replaced by an emaciated DJ and blocky turntables. And the people, close together in sticky knots, sliding up and down to the clotted beat of the musicthey were different.

A hand closed around her wrist and she looked over to see Jack grimacing. ”Are you all right?” she mouthed at him. A ring of white had appeared around his lips and his eyes were almost colorless.

”Too many bodies,” he muttered in her ear. ”Too many spirits. Wasn't ready for the sight.”

Pete glanced around and perceived nothing but a ma.s.s of sweating and mostly pasty humans clothed in shades of black and black.

A strobe flickered across her vision and for a moment she caught flashes of horn and bone, long teeth arching over cloven lower lips as a tongue snaked toward her. Flash again, back to skin and cloth. ”Come on,” she said, tugging against Jack to pull him away from the dancers and their swirling auras.

Jack swayed just a little, sweat beading in the hollow of his neck and stippling the collar of his s.h.i.+rt. Pete reached up and brushed it away. Jack started at her touch, and the white in his eyes deepened back to the usual blue.

”I'm here,” Pete mouthed. Jack squeezed her wrist.

”Ta.”

Hattie was already bent over a tall gla.s.s of whisky, sucking on a borrowed cigarette held out by a Mohawked man with a bare chest and studded jacket.

”Hattie.” Pete indicated the gla.s.s with her chin. ”Give it here.”

”Oi,” said the Mohawk. ”I paid for that, you tart. Leave 'er be.”

”Excuse me,” said Pete, reaching across Hattie's nonexistent chest and taking the tumbler, ”but kindly b.u.g.g.e.r off back to 1985 and leave us the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l alone.”

Jack tilted the whisky down in one swallow, coughed, and then settled on the nearest barstool with a sigh.

The Mohawk looked at Jack, at Pete and Hattie, and then held up his hands. ”Didn't realize she was with you, mate. Apologies.”

”f.u.c.k off,” Jack said plainly. The man left.

”This the sort of impression you were after?” Pete shouted-muttered under the throb of the music. She kept her back to the bar, her hands at her sides, and wished she had something other than wit and fists at her disposal.

Jack faced the body sea with his elbows on the bar, a serene smile playing between his lips and his eyes. ”You ever s.h.i.+ll at cards, Pete?”

”I went into the Met straight out of university so& no,” said Pete.

His fingers twitched and produced a card from his sleeve, a tarot picture of the Hanged Man. ”You lose a few rounds at first,” said Jack, still roving his gaze across the club. ”You chum the waters with your weakness. You stand back and you let them get close, close enough, and you jam the knife in so tight and deep they never stop bleeding.” Jack made the card disappear again, witchfire eating it into nothingness.

Pete eased near enough to speak into Jack's ear. ”So who's getting close to us now?”

A girl in a satin slip adorned with roses, th.o.r.n.y twists of vine when Pete blinked, a dress again when the lights flared, grinned at Jack with needlelike teeth as she slipped past. Jack lit a cigarette and let the smoke trail out through his nostrils. ”The wrong kind of people.” His magic no longer crackled, it rolled off him in the slow honeyed way that made everyone in the club with the least sensitivity turn to look at him. Pete felt it cling to her and shook it off. If Mosswood was right, she was going to have to find a way to shut off the hum, the ripples, and the cries that seemed to resonate through London.

”Wrong for what?”

”Wrong for me to bring around someone like you,” said Jack. ”But oh, so b.l.o.o.d.y right for what we're trying to do.” The houselights went down, and in the sudden blackness Jack's eyes burned blue.

”b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l,” said someone from over Pete's shoulder, sotto voce, but in order to be heard over the music you practically had to scream. ”Jack Winter, isn't it?”

”You're f.u.c.king stoned,” said a male voice. ”Jack Winter's dead.”

Jack's smile slipped down the scale to predatory. ”See?”

Pete and Jack turned in concert to face a pair of young, pale, serious faces, boy and girl, both staring at Jack sidelong.

”If so,” Jack said to them, ”I'd say I managed to make one b.l.o.o.d.y attractive corpse.”

The girl clutched the boy's arm, tearing a hole in his fishnet sleeve with her dead-blood nails. ”By the Black! Arty, it's really him.”

Arty regarded Pete and Jack through hooded eyes, bloodshot with whatever was in his gla.s.s. He sneered when Pete returned his stare. ”Yeah. Guess he hasn't kicked.”

He swung himself to face Jack, limbs heavy. Pete s.h.i.+fted herself to the b.a.l.l.s of her feet, ready to deal Arty a punch to his pointy chin if he moved in on her or Jack.